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THE SOLID SOUTH 



SPEIEICH 



OF 



EMORY SPEER 



■ 


OF GEORGIA 






DECEMBER 19, 1902 




AT 


THE BANQUET OF 


1 

THE 


INDEIPENDEINT 


CLUB 

1 


OF 


BUl-'FALO, NEW YORK. 

1 




1903 




1 


MACON PRESS-PRINT 





THE SOLID SOUTH 



SPEIEICH 



OF 



EMORY SPEER 



OF GEORGIA .,^'^- ^ 



'A 



\ 



DECEMBER 19, 1902 



AT THE BANQUET OF THE 

INDEIPEINDEINT CLUB 

OP BUFFALO. NEW YORK. 



1903 
MACON PRESS— PRINT 



Xlu-p^, 






i 



'nM 



J3Ap'03 



THE SOLID SOUTH 



Mr. President and Gentlemen op the Independent Club : 

Very happy am I to come from my distant Southern home to 
meet on this felicitous occasion the Independent Club and its 
honored guests. The opportunity is perhaps salutary. "Home 
keeping youths," we are told by the Bard of Avon, "have ever 
homely wits." Indeed it may be feared that all Americans are 
not a little provincial. It is then, advantageous for a dweller in 
that clime, whose soft breezes from the Atlantic or the Gulf are 
tempered by "the wandering summer of the seas," to visit these 
hyperborean skies which it is not difficult to discern impart a 
glorious vigor to man and a glowing beauty to woman. Nor, be- 
lieve me, would you regret if like Aladdin in the Arabian story I 
could. whisk this comely gathering to a land I know and love, 
where even now 

"The sweet South breathes o'er banks of violets," 
where the rose gardens yet bloom, and where the soft moonlight 
lingers on fields as white as yours, but with the snowy luxuriance 
of our royal staple. Indeed, the heritage of Americans m those 
magnificent states somewhat generally known as the Solid South, 
ind the, charm of their redundant beauties would kindle a prouder 
Americanism even in minds accustomed to the opulence of this 
Empire State, and sated with the wonders of Niagara. 

The resuscitation of the Southern people since the great civil 
war will be deemed by the future historian as an epoch in the 
])rogress of civilization. ) Speaking as a Southern man, "native 
and to the manner born," as one who loves his people with every 
fibre of his being, while I do not claim that they are all saints, 
and concede that among them there is a considerable sprinkling 
of sinners, I yet contend that their record for a generation past is 
impossible to a people who, howpver mistaken, were otherwise 
than intrepid, patriotic and sincere. Said Edward Everett, "Men 



4 

do not gather the grapes and figs of science, art, taste, wealth and 
manners from the thorns and thistles of lawlessness, venality, fraud 
and violence." But are there no shadows across the bright prom- 
ise of their future? Are there no portents of impending evil in 
the political and social forecast which should arouse their best 
and most anxious thought, and since they are your brothers in 
blood, and since your happiness and prosperity is mdissolubly 
united with theirs, is there nothing in the conditions which envi- 
ron them to awaken your solicitude, and to invoke your assistance. 

These are indeed not merely Southern problems. They are 
also your ])roblems. Is it consistent with vour safety, that 
so many millions of white men there, blood of your blood and 
bone of your bone, should exhibit so much ifidifference to national 
matters of the most vital concern, that they should hear and 
consider but one side, and that not always the right side, of every 
political question, that they should fail to respond to the consen- 
sus of American public opinion, that they should forever submit 
to abnormal and unhealthv political methods, where the skill 
and cunning of the slatemaker and wire puller, may supjilant, m 
the selection of representatives whose votes may control the 
policies of the nation, the pure Americanism and lofty patriotism 
which should be at the service of the people; that the white 
Americans of fourteen states should fail to exert that effective 
force on the policy of the country, which of right should belong 
to their numbn-s, their means, and their capacity for clear, 
])atriotic and decisive political thought. These are the questions. 
They have l»een propounded at home. They are propounded here." 
Is it not true that if we are to maintain in these United States 
a government which is repul)lican in fact, and not merely in 
name, that these un-American conditions must be removed ? 
And is it not also true that to this mighty task there should be 
devoted the most patient, the moat liberal, the profoundest, the 
most patriotic thought and statesmanship of this country ? No 
hopeful step can we take unless we banish partisanship and the 
desire for part^' advantages from our minds, and unless we con- 
sider this question in the light of impartial history. Nor is he 
worthv to approach this lofty duty who does not at once rejoice in 
tiie accomplished lact of the union restored, and in the acerption 



of its strength from the manhood, courage, faith and integrity of 
the Southern people. 

It is undeniably true that the political attitude of the 
Southern people toward the government, is directly ascnbable to 
the swift bestowal by the reconstruction acts of unlimited man- 
hood suffrage upon members of the African race The emancipa- 
tion of the slaves, whatever may be believed to the contrary, was 
far less consequential. After Appomattox, none so visionary 
who did not know that slavery was at an end. The thirteenth 
amendment making human bondage forever impossible was rati- 
fied by the original constituency of the states lately in secession, 
by the votes of those men whose bayonets for four years had 
upheld the tortunes of the Confederate States. Thirty-one years 
ago I listened at the University of Georgia to a carefuUv pre- 
pared oration by Senator BenjamiiT H. Hill, perhaps the 
foremost Southern man of that day. After stating that for more 
than thirty years Southern genius had been chained by some 
offended god of jealous vengeance to the solid rock of slavery, he 
exclaimed in tones that yet ring in my memory: 

'"Tis loosed! We inquire not how, whether by fate or by 
folly; whether in right or in hate; we thank Thee, God, for the 
fact, 'Tis loosed!" 

The possibility of unlimited suffrage among the negroes was 
at first not contemplated even by those great Americans whose 
eloquence, statesmanship and militarv talents had been devoted 
to the preservation ot the Union. In his famous speech on rais- 
ing the flag on Fort Sumter, on the 14th cf April, 1805, Mr. 
Beecher declared. "We should educate the black man and by 
education make him a citizen." In a private letter to Governor 
Hahn, congratulating him as the first tree state governor of Lou- 
isiana. Mr. Lincoln wrote, "You are about to have a conven- 
tion which among other things will prepare and define the elective 
franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration whether 
some of the colored people may not be let in, as for instance, the 
very intelligent, etc." It is interesting to know that the vice- 
president of the confederacy entertained views similar to those of 
the president of the union./ In his testimony before the recon- 
struction committee, Alexander H. Stephens said, "individually 
I should not he opj^osed to a proper system of restricted or limit- 



ed suffrage for this class of our population." In the ])lan for re- 
construction offered by the brilliant Henry Winter Davis of 
Mar3'land and adopted by congress during Mr, Lincoln's admin- 
istration, it was provided that so soon as resistance to the na- 
tional authority had ceased in any state, the governor should en- 
roll the white male citizens, and then an election of delegates to 
the constitutional convention should be ordered. Said Oliver P. 
Morton, the great war governor of Indiana, in a speech delivered 
in his state in 1865, in regard to the question of admitting the 
freedmen of the Southern states to vote, "While I admit the 
equal rights of all men and that in time all men will have the 
right to vote without distinction of color or race, I yet believe 
that in the case of four million of slaves just freed from bondage 
there should be a period of probation before they are brought to 
the exercise of political power." 

Nor does it ajvpear, that more than their leaders, the 
masses of the Northern people had attained the conclusion 
that unlimited negro suffrage would be either salutary or 
right. Widely varying indeed in the two sections was the 
importance of the question. In the South there was one 
negro of voting age to two white men. In the North the 
proportion was eighty-fcnir whites to one negro. Notwithstand- 
ing the inappreciable numbers of the negro in the Northern states, 
the constitutions of all but six had tiie word "white" as a quali- 
fication to manhood suffrage. A few illustrations will show the 
strong prevalence of the opinion that this was essential. In 1868 
the people of Michigan attempted to cliange the constitution. A 
distinct issue on the question of negro suffrage was made l)etween 
the two i^arties, and at the April election the constitution was 
rejected by a majority of forty thousand votes. In 1S<C)~ the ]ieo- 
plo of New York assembled in convention at Albany. The laws 
of the state had attached a property qualification to the right of 
suffrage by neeroes. It was insisted tliat the discrimination 
sliould be abolished, and the vote on this ciuestion was taken Nov. 
'2, 1860. Again by a majority of 40, ()()() the people ri^fused to 
change the constitution in this respect. The action of many 
other Northern states might becited to demonstrate theexistence 
a strong pulilic opinion against unlimited negro suffrage, 
('ertiiin it i.« that it formed no part of Mr. Lincoln's plans for the 



restoration of the union. And yet liow ennobling the generosity, 
how benevolent the love of Abraham Lincoln for his fellow men. 
In the history of those terrible days the majesty of his benignant 
face is lifted above the clouds of human passion that rolled around 
his constant breast, and his rugged features are lighted with a 
radiance which fadeth not away. With the concurring opinions 
of such men as Abraham Lincoln and Alexander H. Stephens, 
but for the intense political passions of the period, and the 
mistakes of leading men North and South, a restricted form of 
negro suffrage in all the country would soon have admitted the 
superior individuals of that race to the elective franchise and 
would have spared the Southern States an immovable provincial- 
ism in matters political, which may well be regarded as the great- 
est menace of our country's future. 

The accession of Andrew Johnson did not materially change 
the presidential policy which had been marked out by Mr. Lin- 
coln. It is true that the new president said much about the 
blackness of the crime of Southern treason, much about the ne- 
cessity of inflicting extreme measures upon the Southern leaders. 
But it IS also true that Mr. McCullough, who was secretary ;. f the 
treasury under both, in his "Men and Measures of Half a Cen- 
tury" declared that "the work of reconstruction was taken up 
just where Mr. Lincoln had left it." This statement is confirm- 
ed by the testimony of Gen. Grant l^efort* the committee for the 
impeachment of Johnson. It is further confirmed by the fact 
that the cabinet remained in office under Johnson, and in the 
early da}S of his administration were unanimous in support of 
this plan. Johnson unhappily possessed little of the per- 
suasive and commanding influence of Lincoln. That he was hon- 
est is no longer questioned. That he was patriotic is conceded. 
But in self-importance he was unsurpassed. "Toil and honest 
advocacy of the great principles of free government," the new 
president observed, "have been my lot." .He added, "the duties 
have been mine, the consequences God's." The complacency of 
this observation has not been attained by any other ruler, save 
by that perhaps imagiiiar}" monarch commemorated in the melo- 
dy of Admiral Coghlan's famous song, "Myself and God." 

The new administration worked rapidly. Witn the assist- 
ance of William H. Seward and the other statesmen who had com- 



posed the war cabinet of Mr. Lincoln, in six weeks the plan of 
reconstruction was put forward. It was substantially that of 
Mr. Lincoln for Louisiana and North Carolina, and thus the res- 
ponsibilities for reconstruction were placed upon the qualified 
voters according to the laws in force at the time of secession 
and the rehabilitation of the states lately in secession was given 
over to the hands of the white race. 

In a period remarkably short the Southern State govern- 
ments were reorganized, their legislatures were enacting laws, 
governors were elected, judges appointed, the courts were in 
session, and senators and representatives to the national congress 
were chosen. No one who knew the men chosen for officials and 
representatives of the new Southern governments could hesitate 
m the opinion that they were among the most enlightened of that 
time. It has been objected by one of their detractors, that the 
Southern people sent to these conventions men who had been 
high in rank in the Confederate armies. That Confederate 
soldiers were selected for Southern conventions will not be sur- 
prising when it is reflected that practically every able-bodied man 
in the South had borne arms in the great struggle. It was sauL 
I believe by Mr. Greely, that for its soldiers the Confederate gov- 
ernment had robbed the cradle and the grave. Nor is it surprising 
that the force and decision of character, and imperturl)ability of 
judgment by which individuals won high rank in the Southern 
armies, peculiarly fitted the same men for responsible duties in 
political bodies. The same writer has pointed out the impro- 
nnety with which such delegates attended the conventions of 
their respective states, while clothed in the uniform of the rank 
they lately held in the " rebel " army. A change of costume 
would no doubt have been appropriate, no doubt was desired, I)ut 
when one has but one coat, he is oblighed to wear it. Few, if 
any, will now question that these men belonged to as high a class 
of statesmanship and public virtue as the South has ever pro- 
duced. With an exercise of popular discretion wliich may well 
be deemed exquisite, they were selected with great regard to con- 
servatism of record. Many of thcMn had been resolute opponents 
of secession, and had cast their fortunes with the Confederacy in 
deference only to that overpowering sense of duty to tlie state, 
wiiich against his every inclination had controlled tiie action of 



9 

Robert Edward Lee, and which, by most Southern men of eleva- 
tion of character, was at that time regarded as the unquestionable 
dictate of principle and honor. 

If I should call the gilded roll selected by my own state, the 
superiority of the new governments would plainly appear. The 
governor was Charles J. Jenkins, an ex-justice of the supreme 
court, who had been offered the position of secretary of the inte- 
rior under President Fillmore, and who had been named as can- 
didate for vice-president with Daniel Webster. In recent days 
Georgia has named two of her illustrious sons for statues in 
the American Valhalla, the old Hall of Representatives in the 
capitol at Washington. One of these, Alexander Hamilton 
Stephens, wdio, though vice-president of the Confederacy, to the 
last, had straggled to assuage the fires of passion in the angry 
breasts of his countrymen, and to dissuade them from the mad- 
ness of secession, was elected as one of the senators from Georgia. 

When the Charles^ton convention of I860 was disrupted, a 
Southern man of commanding position, and unflinching devotion 
to the union was sought as a candidate for vice-president on the 
ticket with Stephen A. Douglass. Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia 
was selected. For his powers as a jurist, orator and statesman 
and in nobility of character, it will be disputed whether the 
state has ever produced his superior. I have known many elderly 
citizens of my state who believed that but for a ruthless trick, 
the commanding and classic eloquence of that great patriot 
would have mastered and swayed the Georgia convention against 
the ordinance of secession, and made the union loving princi- 
ples of the masses of its people triumphant. This noble Geor- 
gian was elected by the new legislature to be United States senator 
with Alexander H. Stepljens. 

By selecting such men as their representatives the Southern 
people gave evidence that with them the war was over and that their 
reconciliation was complete. Nor were the people of the North 
behind them in this feeling. The first acts of the provisional 
governments were regarded with the friendliest interest, and the 
apparent success of his reconstruction measures, won a high de- 
gree of popularity for the president. 

At this critical juncture, most unhappily for the future of 
the country, the Southern state legislatures entered upon a course 



lO 




of legislation with regard to the negro, which proved that they 
wholly misunderstood the public opinion in Northern States. 
And the result, with equal clearness proved that the Northern 
leaders did not comprehend the motives or the exigencies of the 
Southern people. The attempt was to enact laws to compel the 
excited and idle masses of negroes to go to work. 

In the light of the present day, it will, I think be seen, that 
this was not unnatural, nor wholly inexcusable. To the negro of 
all others, a novel sensation is the most delightful. The possi- 
bility of emancipation had been wholly beyond the comprehen- 
sion of the masses of this light-hearted race. As a child regards 
a new toy, so did millions of these black people regard their 
freedom. They had no comprehension of the dignity or necessity 
of labor. Indeed, to teach them the indispensable lesson is now 
thesupreme task of the soundest philosopher and the most prac- 
tical philantropist the race has ever produced. No one can doubt 
;nat I refer to Booker Washington, the unselfish president of the 
great Alabama institution tor the industrial training of colored 
youth. 

In slavery labor had been a tas-k. Slavery was now gone. 
Henceforward they would sail through life "on seas of milk, in 
ships of amber." It followed that few of them could be induced 
to worK at all. No matter how explicit the contract, how favor- 
able the wage, how great the exigency, whether seed • time or 
harvest, how trivial the excuse, away they went by the hundreds 
and thousands, rejoicing in their newly acquired freedom, leaving 
the stern and anxious paroled prisoner of war to comtemplate 
his ruined home, his wasted farm, his rotting crops, the wife and 
daughters struggling with unaccustomed conditions, the prospect 
of hunger for his family, and sale by judicial process of the rem- 
nants of his estate. The result was that the representatives of 
these people liegan to legislate, and such legislation as they worked 
out, plausibly api^eared to the great leaders of anti-slavery thought, 
as an effort on the part of Southern men, notwithstanding all 
that had been done and sviffered, to perpetuate the slavery of the 
African race. Having bO deal with unprecedented conditions, it 
is true that much of this legislation was ill-considered and unjust. 
The excitement it created m the north was ominous. It is how- 
ever, difificult to do justice to the motives which prompt political 



II 



action, unless the point of viev/ of the actors is clearly seen. No 
other than a Southern man who lived through this period, can 
understand the desperation and despair of a ruined people which 
prompted measures for the control of their former slaves, idling 
away the precious hours, hours of labor indispensable to the salva- 
tion of the whites, and the sustenance of the blacks themselves. 
That many of these measures were as unjustifiable as they were in- 
effective, the truest friend of the South may now plainly concede. 
That they were prompted by odious and detestabla motives, by 
malignant cunning, or by hatred of the negro, as has been 
charged, may be as plainly denied. Some of the worst of these 
measures were promptly vetoed by such a high-minded ex-Con- 
federate as Governor Patton of Alabama. Others like that en- 
acted in the State of Georgia, were either set at naught by re- 
peated decisions of the courts or repealed by subsequent legisla- 
tures. Most unhappily, however, for our country in that day 
of fierce political passion, they were held to justify the overturn- 
ing of the state governments which had been re-established, the • 
refusal of the Southern States representation in congress, the ^ 
declaration that they were "dead states" subject to the disposi- 
tion of the victorious section, the appointment of military 
governors over every Southern State, and first instance in the ^^ 
history of mankind, the complete subordination of the Caucasian \ 
to the African race. 

The leader at this period of the great Republican majority 
in the House of Representatives was Thaddeus Stevens. This fa- 
mous man was one of the strongest, and one of the most remarka- 
ble, of that multitude of statesmen and patriots who have sprung 
from the granitic soil of New England. Ever a hater of human 
slavery, he had made his home in a county of Pennsylvania 
bounded on the south by Mason and Dixon's line, and the fre- 
quent spectacle of fugitive slaves worn and wasted by their night 
marches toward the North star to gain the protection of free soil, 
intensified in him this feeling until it became the strongest pas- 
sion of his nature. He was the peculiar champion of that help- 
less people, and when emancipation had been accomplished he 
had no purpose to stop short of the complete enfranchisement of 
the negro. It was this man who, with full control, on the meeting / 
of the 39th congress, was now to direct the legislation which would / 

/ 



I 



12 

govern the relations of the Southern white peo])le with their for- 
mer slaves. 

When the 39th congress assembled, Mr. Stevens immediately 
offered a resolution to provide for a joint committeee on the sub- 
ject, and on December 18, 1865, the house proceeded to the con- 
sideration of congressional reconstruction. With the clear con- 
ceptions of a great logician, he outlined a premise upon which the 
whole frame-work of congressional reconstruction must necessa- 
rily rest. It involved.the power of congress to enforce n^gro suf- 
frage in the Southern States, even before such suffrage had been per- 
mitted by the states which had retained their fealty to the union. 
It will be recalled that section 2 of article I of the constitution 
provides that the electors in each state shall have the qualifica- 
tions requirf^d for electors of the most numerous branch of the 
state legislature. When Mr. Stevens arose and began that mem- 
orable speech, the electors of every state. North and South, ex- 
cept Kansas and five New England states, were members of the 
white race. If the Southern States retained their statehood, no 
one saw more clearly than Mr. Stevens, that by virtue of that 
clause of the constitution, congress had no power to prescribe 
the qualifications of electors. The constitution in this respect 
had not been changed. Then it was necessary to his purpose 
that this statehood should be denied. "There is," he said, 
"fortunately no difficulty in solving this question unless the 
law of nations is a dead letter. War between two acknowledged 
belligerents severed their original compacts and broke all 
ties that bound them together; the future condition of the 
conquered power depends on the will of the conquerer. They 
must come in as new states, or remain as conquered provinces." 
He referred contemptuously to the "dreaming theorists who im- 
agine that these states have never been out of the union." It 
will i.ot suljserve any good purpose at this time to question either 
the sincerity or the patriotism of that great debater and parlia- 
mentarian, nor do I question them. But was this proposition, 
fraught as it was with immediate and inconceivable disaster to his 
countrymen, and with their estrangement for more than a genera- 
tion, maintainable as American law? As these words of Mr. Stevens 
were'uttered in the House of Representatives, that august court, 
the final arbiter of this and every other question arising under 



13 

the constitution and laws of the United States capable of submis- 
sion to a court of justice, was sitting hard by in that historic 
chamber, which in years past had resounded with the stately elo- 
quence of the great Defender of the constitution. Daniel Web- 
ster was dead, but we may believe that his spirit will ever love 
the chamber where once his conquering lance rang full on the 
shield of every champion of disunion, that chamber where now 
sat the court, in which he had counseled and Marshall and Story 
had ruled. Three years had passed. The state of Texas had ap- 
pealed to the original jurisdiction of that court, in a case which 
involved the precise proposition on which the reconstruction leg- 
islation was based, namely, that the seceding and conquered states 
were dead and no longer a part of the Union, and the supreme 
court of the United States declared through Chief Justice Chase : 
"The constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible 
union, composed of indestructible states. The ordinances of se- 
cession were utterly without operation in law. It certainly fol- 
lows that the state did not cease to be a state, nor her citizens 
to be citizens of the union. If this were otherwise, the 
state must have become foreign, and her citizens foreigners, the 
war must have ceased to be a war for the suppression of rebellion, 
and must have become a war for conquest and subjugation." 

From that lucid and impressive declaration of the indes- 
tructibility of the American Union, in all the years since then, 
even by a hairsbreadth, that august tribunal has never departed, 
and the Hon. George P. Hoar, m recent years eulogizing the 
supreme court to the Virginia State Bar Association, said: 
"I have spoken in behalf of a tribunal whose judgments 
upon the greatest questions with which it has ever had to deal, 
have overturned, baffled and brought to naught the policy in re- 
gard to the great matter of reconstruction of the party to which I 
myself belong, and the school of politics in which I have been 
trained." 

The reconstruction law, in the language of General Gar- 
field "was written with a steel pen made out of a bayonet." 
As passed it provided that when the people of any of the insurec- 
tionary states should have adopted a constitution passed by a con- 
vention of delegates chosen by male citizens of whatever race, 
color or previous condition, and when such constitution shall 



14 

provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such 
persons as have the qualifications herein stated for the election of 
delegates, said state shall be declared entitled to representation in 
congresss. "This," said a biographer of Thaddous Stevens, 
"practically treated the Southern States as conquered provinces, 
and as entitled to no rights under the constitution. It prescribed 
universal suffrage for the black as well as the white man, not 
merely in formation of the new state constitutions but as an 
•enduring part of those instruments." 

It is unquestionable that Mr. Stevens, and the great leaders 
of the union who acted with him, had no conception of the disas- 
ters to the South, the disgrace to the country, and the continued 
calamities which this reconstruction legislation would en- 
tail. The history of the world had given no account of an 
assembly of Africans tor the purpose of framing a government. 
Without a precedent in fact, it is not surprising that such 
assemblies in the South should have been startling in result. 
The governments of the Southern States had ever been and are 
now conducted with the most scrupulous regard for economy 
and frugality. It cannot be said that Mr. Blaine in any of his 
speeches or writings was too partial to Southern statesmen, but 
in the first volume of his "Twenty Ytjars of Congress," we lind 
this language: "They constituted a remarkable body of men. 
* * * They gave deep study to the science of govern- 
menf. They were admirably trained as debaters, and they be- 
came skilled in the management of parliamentary bodies. As a 
rule they were liberally educated. * * * They were 
almost without exception men of high integrity and they were 
especially and jealously careful of the public money. Too often 
lavish in their personal expenditures, they believed in economical 
government, and through the long period of their domination 
they guarded the treasury with rigid and unceasing vigilance 
against every attempt at extravagance, and against every form of 
corruption." From the government of such men to the govern- 
ments of the reconstruction era, the declension was indeed precipi- 
tous. 

The figures of the census of 1870, in all their nakedness, 
yet eloquently, depict the conse([uent misery of fourteen American 
states. The briefest citation will suftice. In 18G0 the assessed 



15 

value of property in Massachusetts was but one hundred and 
seven million dollars more than the assessed value of property in 
Georgia. In 1870 the assessed value of property in Massachu- 
setts was more than one-half the entire taxable wealth of the 
fourteen Southern States. In 1860 the South owned 44 per cent 
or nearly h.alf the taxable values of the whole country. In 1870 
the assessed value of property in New York and Pennsylvania 
alone was greater than that in the whole South. South Caro- 
lina, which in 1860, had been third in wealth per capita of its in- 
habitants, had fallen to thirtieth, Georgia had fallen from 
the seventh to the thirty-ninth place, and Alabama from the 
eleventh to the forty-fourth. The Constitutional History of the 
United States by Francis Newton Thorpe, states, that excluding 
the value of slaves, the people of the South, in the five years of 
the war had lost in property, in funds and by the increase of in- 
debtedness, nearly three thousand million dollars, and in ad- 
dition to this they were indebted to the merchants of the 
North for goods purchased and money borrowed for four hundred 
and eight millions more. Their indebtedness exceeded by nearly 
fourteen hundred millions the assessed value of all the property 
of the Ccnifederate States in 1865, and was more than two hun- 
di-bd millions greater than the national debt at its highest point. 
To superadd the losses from the saturnalia of reconstruction was 
indeed unendurable. The debts of the nine states, Alabama, 
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, Texas and Virginia, at the close of the war, was .$76,- 
416,430. The debts of these same states at the end of negro 
control was $289,868,584. The history of the Southern States 
under negro rule has been summed u]) by that brilliant 
writer, Mr. Lecky, in his "Democracy and Liberty," as a 
"grotesque parody of government, a hideous orgy of anarchy, 
violence, unrestrained corruption, undisguised ostentatious in- 
sulting robbery, such as the world had scarcely ever seen." 

The appalling significance of these conditions is plain to 
every man who is capable of their realization, and it requires 
little imagination, and a slender acquaintance with economic 
affairs to conceive the desolation and despair among the people 
of that vast and prolific territory unsurpassed l)y any on 
earth in the variety and value of its productions. It also re- 



i6 

quired little knowledge of the iatrepid and resolute Anglo-Saxon 
population of those states, to perceive that these conditions would 
not last. The reconstruction governments as we have seen were 
accomplished in disregard of the constitution. This, it is plain, 
was revolution, and by revolution these governments were swiftly 
overthrown. 

Was the material prosperity of a people the measure of their 
happiness, there would be nothing in the conditions of these 
Southern States of the American Union to arouse the alarm of 
those who love them. An increase in population since the days 
of reconstruction of 44 per cent., in acreage of farms from two 
hundred and thirty-three millions to nearly four hundred mill- 
ions, a positive increase of a million farms in twenty years, a 
percentage of 63 for the South as against 42 for the whole coun- 
try, an increase in farm values in the same period of upwards of 
one billion two hundred and seventy-one millions, or about 100 
per cent., with a profit on farm investments of 25 per cent, as 
against 16.2 in the whole country, in co ton manufacturing an 
increase of 297 per cent in mills, 669 percent in capital, and 
1024 per cent, in spindles, an increase of raiKvay mileage of 38,- 
.-512 miles, or 162 per cent., and other facts equally marvelous, all 
/ mark a phenomenal recuperation of the South, as significant of 
I the abounding resources of that favored land, as of the constan- 
cy, energy and integrity of its people. Indeed Southern men 
deserve the sympathy and admiration of the world for the cour- 
age, tenacity and fortitude with which they have struggled with 
penury, the heroism with which they have triumphed over ad- 
verse fortunes, the swerveless courage with which they have 
marched through the valley and shadow of their griefs and sor- 
rows, now perchance under the providence of God, to rest and re- 
joice in the green fields and by the still waters of our reunited 
land. 

But it IS true, that no people can build securely unless the 
foundations on which they build are also secure, and the founda- 
tions of popular government are to be found alone in the freedt)m 
and purity of the ballot, in the equal distribution uf political 
power, in the freedom of political thought, and in independence 
of political action, which can alone make free thought valuable. 

The histoi'}' of rec<jnstriictio;i ha^ leftan indellible impres- 



17 

sion upon the minds of the Southern people. The words "negro 
domination" can invoke a hideous specter which will not down. 
That it is spectral merely has made little dirference. It matters 
not that in a political sense we are now and have been for years 
politically in as little danger from the negro as we are from the 
subjects of the Iraan of Muscat or the Ahkound of Swat. Negro 
domination is the monotonous slogan, and notwithstanding the 
widely varying view^ of our people on the great questions of the 
day, we behold the solid South. 

In the recent election, by majorities the most unequivocal, 
the policies of the government have received the approbation of 
the people of every Northern and Western state. But the Solid 
South has been immovable. Of the 125 representatives from its 
homogeneous American population, onlv four are in apparent 
sympathy with those measures of the government, through which 
the people of the United States have attained a plane ot prosperity 
unexampled, and the country itself the attitude of a world power, 
at once so equable and so irresistible, that the authoritative ex- 
pression of its people's will seems to have the force and effect of 
international law. While this is true, it is also true that multi- 
tudes of Southern men of the most forceful character are in full 
accord with these policies. I believe that a majority of Southern 
men would be as little likely to denounce the treaty of Paris, as 
the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, as unlikely to surrender the 
Philippine archipelago, as the prairies of Texas. The truth is, 
our reflecting people know that if the economic policies of the 
administration were reversed, a wave of bankruptcy would over- 
whelm our every interest as completely as the boiling floods from 
the West Indian crater swept a people from among the names of 
men. They know that the whirr of the cotton mills would 
be hushed, that the mines would be closed, the forges voice- 
less, the lumber mills shut down, and the railways no longer 
taxed to their capacity to move the products of field, forge and 
factory. They know that in lieu of the remunerative price they 
now get, they would do well again to secure ;") cents per pound for 
their annual crop of 10,500,000 bales of that indispensable product 
of which we hold the monopoly for clothing three-quarters of the 
human race. Yet they vote with mechanical reiteration against 
their everv interest. Whv is this? 



i8. 

In the December number of the Xorth American Review 
may be found the last of the many contributions with 
which Thomas B. Reed has enriched the political litera- 
ture of his country. The first sentence was: "The elec- 
tions for this year have taken place, and we have escaped the 
one great danger of a Democracy, which is the decision of great 
questions without discussion." In the Southern States this -'one 
great danger to Democracy" isau accomplished reality. In noth- 
ing is the unnatural suppression o'i political -independence there 
more clearly apparent than in the utter absence of public discus- 
sion of national questions. And yet the Southerner is by nature a 
debater. He debates as the New Englander mechanizes, as the 
Venetian paints, as the modern Italian sings. Most of the fa- 
mous men of our past have been noted as great popular orators. 
The popular assemblies to hear tne joint discussions of men and 
measures resembled the folkmote of the Anglo-Saxon. When such 
men as Patrick Henry. John Randolph, Zeb Vance, John 
C. Ualhoun, Henry Clay, John Forsyth,' Alexander H. Stephens, 
Robert Toombs and Benjamin H. Hill met the people on the 
hustings, the preparation and elTorts of the speikers, and tha 
great interest of the auditors were "bark and steel to the mind." 
The whole plane of popular mentality was lifted, the whole cur- 
rent of popular thought quickened and clarified. The late Justice 
L. Q. C. Lamar, himself a marvelous poi)ular orjjtor, once said to 
me; "I have no skill as a wire puller. Whenever I heard of a 
combination against me I would go there, speak to the peo|)le, and 
break it up." A\'ith such training was it surprising that the 
Southern statesmen of the historic past were names to conjure 
with, or that their constituents, though in large numbeis denied 
the advantages of careful education, took an intelligent interest 
in the affairs of the country and divided uj)on patriotic princi[)les 
almost equally between the great parties of the day? Now this, 
is all gone. Of tlie measure it is no longer inciuiriHl witli Henry 
Clay "is it right, will it c(<nduce to the general happiness, and to the 
elevation of national character? Of the nominee it is no longer 
asked with Thoma? Jefferson, "is he honest, is he capal)h\ is ho 
f:tithful to the constitution? To such a pitch has this i)erilous 
indilVcrence gone, that m the last Kansas City convention a deUv 
gate from a nol)l(> Southern state arose and declared that he came 



19 

from a state which would support any candidate the convention 
might nominate, on any platform it might draft. 

It is true that the Southern people see Republicanism in its 
most unattractive guise. And when was the occasion within the 
memory of this generation, where any Northern statesman of na- 
tional reputation and attractive eloquence undertook to make 
plain to a Southern audience the great policies of government 
upon which Republicanism is based? Was there ever a political 
campaign conducted in a Southern state, by the authorities of 
the Republican party with the energy, skill and thoroughness to 
which the people of every Northern state have become habituat- 
ed? I know that there is an opinion abroad that it would be dis- 
agreeable and perhaps dangerous for Republican statesmen from 
the North to address the masses of the Southern people. If this 
was once true, it is true no longer. The great leaders of Northern 
thought would be welcomed with kindly hospitality and heard 
by courteous if not enthusiastic thousands. No surer means 
could be adopted for breaking there the hitherto unbroken solid- 
arity of political action. With such campaigns as are conducted 
in New York, Ohio, Indiana and other Northern states, with a 
wide dissemination ot the great newspapers and other literature, 
with the "spell-binder" abroad in the land, the people would be- 
gin to think for themselves, interest m national politics would 
be awakened, white men would differ, and black men as well, and 
as a consequence hopeful progress would be made toward the pu- 
rity and freedom of the ballot, the restoration of the American 
spirit, and the return to constitutional methods. Even now 
thousands of men in the South, mainly 3'oung men, are ready to 
exclaim with Emerson, "Let there be an entrance opened for me 
into realities. I have worn the fool's cap too long." There are 
thousands of other men termed by a great Georgian "the educat- 
ed leaders of labor, who hold in their grasp the ever enlarging 
fields which employ improve and control mankind." These men 
especiallv, and many others resent the fact that they are contin- 
ually drawn into a political machine whicli kills thought and sti- 
ties reflection. At the ["niversity of Georgia, the alma mater of 
hundreds of the foremost leaders of Southern thought, at the 
commencement this year, the original addresses of not less than 
six of the students, were protests against the continued surrender 



20 



of polititical independence on the part of the young men of the 
South. To me it matters not whether such men ally themselves 
to the Democratic or Republican party. My plea is for the revi- 
val of the American spirit, for the restoration of constitutional 
methods. I pray to see the handicap of provincialism stricken 
from the minds of the aspiring youth of my state and my section. 
I pray to see the imputation of a sullen and immovable resent- 
fulness toward the government and its ennobling purposes re- 
moved from my section. Indeed with the masses of the people it 
does not exist. No man has the right to place the Southern 
people toward our government in the attitude of Ireland toward 
the government of Great Britain. 
/ The fear of an impossible negro supremacy is the only ob- 

// stacle. But is this insurmountable ? The argument seems to 
j' demand a practical suggestion to relieve the minds of the South- 
ern people from the fear of that supremacy, however unreal it 
may be. The remedy seems to be as obvious as just. It is to be 
found in the enactment of impartial laws for white and black alike, 
which will admit to the franchise the intelligent, upright and 
responsible of both races, and exclude the venal, the ignorant 
and the worthless. And such measures need not be confined to 
the Southern States. The polyglot vote of our great cities, be- 
cause more effective, seems not infrequently not less dangerous 
to sane government, than the massed vote of the ignoi-unt tjlacks. 
And if the statesmanship which controls the policy of the forty- 
five indestructible sovereignties, declines to consider such 
laws as will secure a pure ballot and a free ballot, is it not 
the part of wisdom for the National government to begin 
the consideration of a reform so vital to the stalnlity of 
our institutions ? Is it illogical or dangerous to entrust to na- 
tional law the qualifications of the electorate for national of- 
fices, and to entrust the enforcement of the law to the national 
courts? That it would recpiin^ a change of the constitution is 
true, but shall not the constitution be changed if this is plainly 
essential to ett'ectuate its ennobling, its sul)lime pur;;v)ses ? Said 
Mr. Justice Miller, for a unanimous court, in exparte Varborougli, 
llU IJ. S. : "If the very source of power may l)e |)oisoned l)y corrup- 
tion or controlled by violence and outrage without kgal r(^straint, 
then indeed is the country in danger and its best powers, its 



21 

highest purposes, the hopes which it inspires and the love which 
enshrines it, are at the mercy of the combinations of those who 
respect no right hut brute force on the one hand, and the un- 
principled corruptionist on the other. 

It is true that to a Southern man worthy of the name, 
aye to every informed American, negro domination is un- 
thinkable, but, he is neither a humanitarian nor a patriot, 
who would see nothing m the future of nine millions of 
those black people save a piteous story of decadence, degredation 
and death. It is true that there are negroes whose desperate and 
beastial savagery have brought the coverts of those horrid jungles 
where their forebears sweltered, ravished and slew, close to the 
homes of helpless innocence and trembling virtue. But these 
brutish beasts are the outcasts of the race, and besides, they are 
not distinguished for great longevity. It is not just or wise to 
judge millions of black men by their vilest criminals. He is a 
poor student of that singular people who does not perceivfi 
among them a multitude of types as varying in tribal charac- 
teristics as the racial traits of the composite white population of 
our land. The explanation is easy. The slave-catcher may have 
captured the cruel cannibal of the Congo, the Bechuana ot the 
Transvaal, the Makololo of the Zambesi, the tribesmen of the 
gentle black men who followed and nurtured Livingstone in his 
long travels, or of the brave Zanzibari who marched and fought 
with Stanley in his tremendous journey across the dark continent. 
Are the kindly and intelligent, the industrious and faithful of 
this people to be deprived of hope because others are stupid, 
treacherous, corrupt? Indeed, thousands of these colored men 
are good citizens and useful members of society. ''Vhen they 
were emancipated, every member of the race might have joined 
as most ot them no doubt did, in the old Methodist hymn : 

"No foot of huid do I possess. 
No cottafje in tliis wilderness." 

How is it now? On the lOth inst., the Director of the Cen- 
sus kindly favored me with a statement which shows the most 
marvelous advance in the acquisition of property by this people. 
From this it appears that m the United States the negro farmers 
own and operate 740,717 farms. These include 88,283,938 acres. 
Their value is $499,948,734. The value of the products for the 



22 

year 1S90 was $255, 751,145. It will be observed that this im- 
mense sum of productive capacity in one year is more than 
50 per cent, of the entire value of the farms, and to pro- 
duce it they expended only $8,789,792 for labor and $5,614,841 
for fertilizers, leaving them a net profit on one year's opera- 
tions $241,846,512, which is 48 per cent of their investment. An 
easy explanation of this is that most of their labor is the work of 
themselves their wives and children. The doctrines of Malthus have 
had as yet no apnreciable effect upon these American citizens of Af- 
rican descent, and when a colored farmer in Georgia is asked how 
many children he has, he will usually reply, "I have five hoe hands 
and six cotton pickers." In my own state of Georgia, there are 
nearly 88.000 farms owned and operated by negroes with an acreage 
of nearly 5,500,000, and a value of $48,992,879. The value of 
their products for the year 1899 in that state alone was $29,989,- 
421. They expended for labor $1,208,800 and for fertilizers $1,- 
684,010. From these figures an easy calculation shows that 
the negro who owned his farm in Georgia, in an average 
year made a profit of 61 per cent, on his farming operations. 
It is idle to speak of the deportation oi a population so valuable. 
The truth is, we could not get along without them. They lave 
/ no purpose to become extinct themselvf^s. Then it follows that 
( it is the duty of every true man to do all in his jjower to make 
: them better citizens and better men. 

A danger to the welfare of the Southern States is the possible 
reduction of the existing number of representatives apportioupd 
upon millions of this population whose men of voting age are l)v 
state action denied the suffrage. This may any day startle tiio 
country, as nothing has done since the reconstruction era. No 
change of the constitution is here required. A majority of the 
congress, under the provisions of the fourteenth amendment have 
the power if they have the will. Thirty-six representatives are 
apportioned to the Southern States upon the basis of the 1)1 ack 
population. Surely anxious thought on a matter so vital is 
tiuiely when it is reflected that in an entire state with a popula- 
tion of 557,807 whites and 782,821 blacks, in electing seven con- 
gressmen, there were cast in the last election only 741 votes in 
opposition to the prevailing party. But no measure, however 
stringent will be ell'ective for good government or stal)l(^ [)rnsppr- 



23 



ity if it engenders the universal hostility of a resolute people. 
This will be inevitable from a reduction of our representation. 
We may trust that this will not be attempted. But it is at least 
timely to stimulate if we may profound political thought among 
our people, which may avoid the necessity of a measure so dras- 
tic and so exciting. To stimulate such thought I understand to 
be a mission of the Independent Club. Would that there were 
such an organization in every Southern community, an associa- 
tion of high-minded and disinterested men whose love for coun- 
try and humanity prompts the consecration of their powers to 
the promotion of independence. 

"Heaven's next best ^ift 
To tliat of life and an immorlal soul !" 

After all that has been said and done, we have abounding 
reasons for gratitude to Him who holds the destinies of nations 
in the hollow of His hands, for the blessings we enjoy in our 
national life. The swiftness with which the wounds of our 
great Civil War were healed and its scars obliterated is literally 
without precedent in the annals of time. In the space of a 
moment, if counted by the life of a nation, the men who were 
leaders in the Confederate struggle were restored as leaders in the 
official life of the union. Not a proscription, not a confiscation, 
not an execution under the charge of treason, marked the ter- 
mination of that titanic struggle which utterly destroyed seven 
billions of values and seven hundred thousand numan lives. 
And let me say that this national magnanimity, only pos- 
sible where government is controlled by the great heart of the 
people, was not undeserved by Southern men. There was on their 
part no disloyalty to the principles of the constitution. It was 
merely a question with them as to where their allegiance was due. 
Of these men General Grant penned with the faltering hand of 
the dying his conviction that they were as sincere as were his own 
gallant troops in their faith in the cause for which they fought. 
And said our living president, himself a soldier, but like your 
own Hamilton, "formed for all parts and in all shining variously 
great," they "had a most hearty faith in the justice of their^, 
cause," and "he is but a poor American whose veins do not 
thrill with pride as he reads the deeds of desperate prowess done 
by the Confederate armies." 



i 



\> 



24 

Nor are the}'- without claims upon your gratitute. Blot from 
the flag every star placed there by the statesmanship 
or valor of your Southern brethren and there will be diminished 
by half, its scintillating glories. Well do I know that people. 
It is a temperate people, a devout. God-fearing people, faithful to 
home and wife and little ones, as jurors true and impartial. 
Less than one in a hundred of any other save the old American 
strain. Clear and shrewd in mind, in frame tall and slender, but 
strong and sinewy, wuth Huguenot, Anglo-Saxon or Scotch-Irish 
faces — the faces of their sires of old who on the field of Ivry, 
pressed where led the helmet of Navarre; faces of sires who 
greeted good Queen Bess at Tilbury, when she rode down the 
lines of her yeomanry marshalled to meet the dreaded infantry ot 
Spain ; faces of sires who at Dunbar spurred after the gleaming 
sword of Cromwell when he shouted, "Let God arise, let His ene- 
mies be scattered!" faces of sires Avho hurledthe enemies of civil 
and religious liberty from the battlements of Londonderry and with 
William of Orange breasted the shot-riven waters of the Boyne; 
faces of sires who fell in 

"Witli the old (3ontiiu>nt)ils, 
In ragged regimentals, yielding not." 

Think you, my countrymen, when the military scientists of 
other lands are estimating the fighting strength of the American 
people, that while they count the hero boys in blue, they will 
overlook the sons of that far-flung battle line of gray whose 
daring and constancy will live in song and story to the 
latest times? Nol The tangled chapparal of Guasimas, the 
ensanguined summit of San Juan, the winds that woo 
Manila bay, the waves of ocean that moan through the shot- 
riven hulks of Spain, have told the story to the ages that now and 
forever in its need, our every heart is steeled and every arm is 
nerved to uphold in 8af9ty and m honor the Flag of the freeman's 
home and hope. 



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